Part 3 (1/2)

When we look at the forms which have been presented to children with these their spontaneous patterns fresh in mind, we can see, I think, why Mother Goose has been taken as a child's own and Eugene Field and even Stevenson rejected as unintelligible. I do not believe there is anything in the content of Mother Goose to win the child. I believe it is the form that makes the appeal. Vachel Lindsay, whose daring play with words has made him an object of suspicion to the reluctant of mind, has given us one poem in pattern singularly like the children's own and in content full of interest and charm. Again I give examples as the quickest of arguments. And I give them in verse where the form is more obvious and can be shown in briefer s.p.a.ce than in stories.

Jack and Jill Went up the hill To fetch a pail of water.

Jack fell down And broke his crown And Jill came tumbling after.

TIME TO RISE

A birdie with a yellow bill Hopped upon the window sill, c.o.c.ked his s.h.i.+ning eye and said: ”Ain't you shamed, you sleepy head?”

--_Stevenson._

THE LITTLE TURTLE

(A recitation for Martha Wakefield, three years old)

There was a little turtle.

He lived in a box.

He swam in a puddle.

He climbed on the rocks.

He snapped at a musquito.

He snapped at a flea.

He snapped at a minnow.

And he snapped at me.

He caught the musquito.

He caught the flea.

He caught the minnow.

But he didn't catch me.

--_Vachel Lindsay._

From THE d.i.n.kEY-BIRD

So when the children shout and scamper And make merry all the day, When there's naught to put a damper To the ardor of their play; When I hear their laughter ringing, Then I'm sure as sure can be That the d.i.n.key-bird is singing In the amfalula tree.

--_Eugene Field._

Of the two ”Jack and Jill” and ”Birdie with the Yellow Bill,” surely Stevenson's is the more charming to the adult ear. But when I have read it to three-year-olds, I have felt that they were lost. They could not sustain the long grammatical suspense, could not carry over ”A birdie”

from the first line to the conclusion and so actually did not know who was saying ”Ain't you shamed, you sleepy-head!” Mother Goose repeats her subject. The span to carry is two phrases in Mother Goose as against four in Stevenson. The Vachel Lindsay I have found is as easily remembered and as much enjoyed as Mother Goose, though it is a pity it is about an unfamiliar animal. As for the d.i.n.key-bird even a seven-year-old can hardly _hear_ the rhyme even if intellectually he could follow the adult vocabulary and the complicated sentence with its long postponed subject.

It is the same with stories. The cla.s.sic tales which have held small children,--”The Gingerbread Man,” ”The Three Little Pigs,”

”Goldylocks,”--have patterns so obvious and so simple that they cannot be missed. In ”The Gingerbread Man” the pattern is one of increasing additions. It belongs to the aptly called ”c.u.mulative” tales. The refrains act like sign-posts to help the child to mark the progress.

This is simply a skilful way of making the continuity close, of showing the ladder rungs for the child's feet. I venture to say that any good story-teller consciously or unconsciously puts up sign-posts to help the children. If he is skilful, he makes a pattern of them so that they are not merely intellectually helpful but charming as well. So Kipling in his ”Just So Stories” uses his sign-posts,--which are sometimes words, sometimes phrases, sometimes situations,--in such a way that they ring musically and give a pleasant sense of pattern even to children too young to find them intellectually helpful.